The Komneniad
Memories become legends. Legends become myths and even myths are eventually forgotten.
When I first heard these words, I scoffed at their obviousness. The ancients could not have been more simple. But as I sit here in my summer palace in Athens, necessary to warm these old bone, I can safely say that these words are more accurate than any other. I have lived through events that have become to mythologized to the point that I can scarcely reconcile the two. I hear the awed tones of the slaves and free men alike when I pass through the streets:
“Look there is the great Diadokh himself, the Antypathos Andronikos Philosophos Palaiologos, Megas Strategos of the Hellaides and Kibyrrhaioton. Favoured of Alexios Apokatastátis, Imperial Historian of the Komnenoi Doukai and great hero of the Georgian Wars.”
Those names and titles mean nothing to me. Where is this great man that they speak of? I still remember the young boy of fifteen who was brought to Alexios’ refuge in Trapezous. We were all young boys at the time. No, I cannot speak a lie, we were young men. We had no idea of the consequences of our actions or what it would take to accomplish our goals. The dead we have had to leave behind, the blood we had to spill. It was necessary. We did not set out to forge an empire through blood and sweat like Megas Alexios did one hundred years before. We sought to save the glory that is Rome. I was barely out of my childhood when the Latins arrived, when the empire fell around us. Of Alexios Apokatastátis’ Strategoi, Ioannes Poryphorgenitos was the only one that was present in the City when it burned and he had been eight at the time. My brother Michael, long dead and finally at rest, had been there as well, before he fled with the rest of the army to Nikaea. He never spoke of it to me. None that were there, spoke of it save in hushed voices. Alexios may not have been there but his blood boiled at the thought of what happened to his fellow Romans.
Alexios.
The world looks duller without his presence. He burned like the sun, full of life and energy. Vigorous to the end. No other man could have accomplished what he did. No other man could have arrested the decline of our once glorious empire and brought together the shattered remnants. Even his thrice-blessed son Ioannes Horaios, Autokrator of the Romans under Jesus Pantokrator, even as glorious as he is, could not have accomplished what his father had done. It was often said that Alexios was Megas Alexios reborn and looking back, I could believe it. The Serbs, the Bulgarians, the Latins and the Turks, none could stand against him. The only battle he ever lost was his one against the Reborn Scourge. Those who fought alongside him, those that the people now call Diadokhoi in reference to Megas Alexandros and his generals, we were made better because of him. We accomplished everything that we have done because of him.
This tale is not about Alexios however. Nor the Komnenoi Doukai. This story is about Roma Eterna and how the fire may dim but it can never truly die.
In the centuries since the end of the Crisis of the 3rd Century, no average Roman would have thought that the Empire could have sank any lower. Through the Heraklaeian wars with Persia, the Muslim Invasions and then through the disaster at Manzikert, the belief in Roma Eterna was unshakeable. Hadn’t Diocletian, Constantine, Justinian, the two Basileios and of course Alexios the Lion, come to power and restored roman virtue and hegemony to the world? No matter the crisis that faced Rome, an emperor blessed by God would come to save the Empire, favoured of Jesus Pantokrotar.
It would be Rome’s newest crisis, a crisis that would split the Empire in six squabbling states, a crisis that would bring a horde to the Queen of Cities that had not been seen since Attila the Scourge of God and a plague that would decimate the Empire. This crisis would shake the world's belief in Roma Eterna and
At the time it was known as the Time of Troubles, where brother fought against brother and death haunted every corner. It has been given many names since then by my fellow historians: the Dark Ages, the Last Days of the Roman Empire, the Age of Pestilence and the Age of the Mongol. The one that has lasted the longest and the one that has encapsulated all the trials the Empire faced, was the Crisis of the Thirteenth Century...
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